A Moment of Quiet

Last weekend, M cut his ankle badly enough to need stitches, so he has been stuck at home. And by stuck, I mean wandering around Frick Park with Laurel and Marko trying to catch Pokemon instead of out doing his big training runs on the trails. He's antsy, but I think the forced rest is probably a good for him. I think he will get back out this week sometime.

Right now, he's gone with the kids and I'm trying to move as little as possible while I watch Max carefully eat little bits of sweet potato. It's very hot. Sticky midsummer Pittsburgh hot. I've had to really slow down our activities this past week and concentrate on keeping the kids hydrated and cool, especially Max. When we go out on a walk we tuck little ice packs under his stroller pad. I finally ventured out again to the pool with three kids and it was a success, ie no drownings or near drownings, but I will definitely be avoiding crowds for now.

Running Club has been going on for a good few weeks now and we've hit a place where families are stepping up to volunteer to lay the course and others bring ideas for tag games. We get a rotating crowd of regulars and between 15 and 20 people show up every week. I try to keep it to an hour so anyone with early bedtimes can jet out at 7, but a few families always stay a little later. If anyone wants to start a Kids Running Club, it's pretty easy. It's basically a hash, but shorter and without the beer. And plus a game of tag! We picked a day and a time to meet regularly and started posting it on Facebook as an event so people could share the link with their friends. On the event page, I wrote an FAQ to address common questions. We decided that we would run for about an hour and do four parts. First a warm up game that could be started as people arrived. Then stretching and review of the rules and introductions since new people show up all the time. We have three regular rules and one silly rule. 1) Be kind and have fun. 2) Take good care of your body. 3) Leave the park better than you found it. The silly rule is Go before you come (no bathrooms here!). Then we run the course which we've kept to about a 1/4 mile- 1/3 mile loop. Some kids do 2-3 laps, others just go once. In the future, I think I'd like to have a bunch of cheap stopwatches so they could each time themselves (instead of racing for 1st, 2nd, 3rd place). The best part is the cheer we do at the end. "2-4-6-8 Running Club is really great!" - I am actually surprised that the kids like it as much as they do but Marko chants it all week long.

Sometimes I feel like I'm doing nothing but just barely getting through the day, but the fact that I was able to make something like Running Club happen means there's more here than just surviving. And that feels pretty good.